The Sleeping Giant is Awakening
Mar 28, 2017
It appears that Tommy Hicks’ vision from July 25, 1962 is finally about to be fulfilled.
http://www.thechurchofliberty.com/prophecy/tommy_hicks_1961.htm
Hicks was the man whom the Father used in the great Argentine revival in 1954. In 1961 He saw the overcomers in the form of a sleeping giant awakening and rising to bring the glory of God into the earth. As of today, March 28, 2017, the giant is beginning to stir.
Today is the first of Abib, the first day of the first month in the Hebrew calendar (after Moses was told to change the calendar in Exodus 12:2). We have turned the page of history. This year will be good news for the overcomers; bad news for the Babylonians and even for those portions of the church that do not wake up with the giant.
The Latter Rain Movement
When God brought Israel out of Egypt, He did not lead them by the shortest route to the Promised Land. Israel was the church in the wilderness (Acts 7:38 KJV), empowered by Passover, and their encampments prophesied of the second church—that of Pentecost—which began in Acts 2 and has continued to the present time. We are now about to enter the third church—the Tabernacles Church.
The Pentecostal Church’s journey to the greater Promised Land really began with Martin Luther when he posted his 95 Theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. That was nearly 500 years ago now. His act caused his excommunication and expulsion from the bondage of his own “Egypt” (i.e., the Roman Church), and it sparked the Protestant Reformation.
Next the church crossed the Red Sea of baptismal water cleansing with the Holiness Movement (John and Charles Wesley). Then men like Charles Finney discovered that Yahweh Rapha, the God who heals, as the church arrived at the waters of Marah (Exodus 15:26 KJV). Then came the great missionary movements of the 1800’s, as the church came to Elim, with its seventy palms and twelve wells (Exodus 15:27). It prophesied of the seventy nations and wells of salvation.
Then came Pentecost at Mount Sinai in the early 1900’s with Charles Parham and William Seymour.
Finally, just as Israel then went to the southern border of Canaan and sent the twelve spies to spy out the land, so also God sent the Latter Rain Movement in 1948, which was one of the shortest but most intense outpouring of the Holy Spirit in church history. Out of this movement came the great evangelists and healing ministers of the 20th century.
However, this movement died because of carnality, people fighting over who was to be an apostle and who would have some lesser status. Or so I was told personally by George Hawtin himself, who was the founder of the Latter Rain. I asked him point-blank in September 1993 what killed the Latter Rain, and he told me the sad story. We had breakfast together in Edmonton, Alberta, since we were both speakers at the same conference.
The Last Apostle of the Latter Rain Buried
Clayt Sonmore, the last apostle of the Latter Rain Movement (1948-1952) died on March 13, 2017 and was buried in Minneapolis yesterday, March 27.
http://thykingdomcomeministries.com/
The last time I saw Clayt was at the funeral of Brother Martin in December of 1998. They were long-time friends, and we moved to Minneapolis in 1996 to help Martin’s ministry, known as Arise and Shine Fellowship. Clayt’s last word to me was: “We’ll have to have breakfast together some time.”
Sadly, we never had that breakfast.
But yesterday, while discussing these things, I received a phone call from California, asking me if I knew about Lakewood Memorial Cemetery in Minneapolis. I looked it up and found where it was, but no, I had never been there. About 3 hours later, at 2:45 pm it occurred to me that Clay Sonmore was just then being buried at that cemetery. His memorial service had been scheduled for 2 pm. This so-called “coincidence” was God’s way of drawing my attention to the timing of his burial and its importance in showing the spiritual shift.
About 4 pm yesterday I received another phone call from a friend who wanted to share revelation that from the Father that he had been receiving since March 18. He talked about a new set of apostles being raised up in the spirit of Tabernacles, while the apostles of the era of Pentecost were now in retirement “as of March 18, 2017.” Of course, I was able to share with him about the ten-day extension from March 18 to 28.
I thought that was another nice touch, since that word tied the burial of Clayt Sonmore to the end of Pentecost. The Latter Rain Movement, though it received a revelation of the feast of Tabernacles, was like the twelve spies in Numbers 13, who got a taste of the fruits of the Promised Land, but were unable to enter.
The Two Reports
Clayt himself wrote a book, Beyond Pentecost, wherein he urged the church to go beyond its Pentecostal mindset into something greater.
http://thykingdomcomeministries.com/
I read the book on a flight to Australia in the late 1990’s. It is a very good book, except for his rejection of the Restoration of All Things. Even though the founder of the Latter Rain Movement, George Hawtin, came to believe in Restoration, this revelation was not accepted by most of their apostles.
Perhaps reading this book was especially significant, since Australia was originally called Australia del Espiritu Santo, The Southland of the Holy Spirit. Australia is a type of Pentecost, just as New Zealand is a type of Passover with its Southern Cross flag.
In my view, this was symptomatic of the shortcoming of the Movement and their inability to truly eat of the full fruit of Kingdom Truth. A few gave the “good report” about the Restoration of All Things, while others continued to give the “evil report” about an eternal torture pit for the vast majority of humanity. In other words, as Moses put it in Numbers 14:15, 16, the nations will say that God was unable to save them, even though He had vowed to do so through the New Covenant. God’s answer is seen in Numbers 14:21, “indeed, AS I LIVE, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord.”
He means: Do you think I have a problem bringing these few Israelites into the Promised Land? Wait until you see what I do with the entire earth!
When He said, “as I live,” God made a legal oath in His court. He swore on His own name, since there was no other name greater to swear upon. It was much the same as His New Covenant oath in Deuteronomy 29:12-15, when He vowed to make everyone His people and to be their God, whether they were present or not.
The point is that we today are entering into a new apostolic era. This new body of apostles is what Tommy Hicks saw as a sleeping giant in 1961. That giant is now awakening, for the time has come to go beyond Pentecost and to see the glory of the Lord as it begins to cover the earth.
The Twelve Apostles and Apostle Islands (Signs in 2016)
Last year, February 25, 2016, when we were in Australia for a week, we stopped to see The Twelve Apostles, which are islands off the southern coast. The Trip report is here:
After returning home, on May 22, 2016 we went on a cruise through The Apostle Islands in Lake Superior. Here is the trip report:
http://www.gods-kingdom-ministries.net/daily-weblogs/2016/05-2016/apostle-islands-trip-report/
From this we knew that the prophecy and prayer campaign, He Is Building Effective Apostleship, March 22-24, 2001 was about to be fulfilled. But nothing seemed to happen until now. It seems that everything had to wait until the last apostle of the Latter Rain had been buried.
George Warnock, another apostle of the movement who wrote the classic book, The Feast of Tabernacles, died last year at the age of 98.
http://www.georgewarnock.com/bio.html
I read his book in 1982, and it changed my thinking, giving me a vision of something greater than Passover and Pentecost.
George Hawtin himself (the founder) died in 1994, about six months after I met him in Edmonton, Alberta. He and I were speakers at the same conference in October 1993. That conference was also the occasion of my revelation of the Hezekiah Factor.
I myself was born in the midst of the Latter Rain in 1950, though my parents were not part of that movement. Nonetheless, they knew of it and spoke reverently of Leonard Ravenhill, another of those apostles. When the Father gave us the revelation in 2001 about a new apostleship that was coming, where He would call a bunch of nobodys and spiritual misfits to do a great end-time work, I did not know when this time would arrive. But just as the Latter Rain began on Valentine’s Day to show the heart of the Father, so also are we now 16 years from the end of that prayer campaign (March 24, 2001). Sixteen is the biblical number of Love.
Since I have been posting “bad news” items lately in regard to a great earthquake that I believe will take down the old political and economic order set up by Mystery Babylon, I wanted also to show the “good news” that is coming at the same time. The important thing is to be on the right side of the divine plan, to be a vessel of honor, not a vessel of dishonor. Both are in the Father’s hands, as Paul tells us in Romans 9, but I much prefer being a vessel of honor.
Waking Up
Finally, yesterday I received another report from a friend. He wrote:
“I woke up two nights ago at 3:18, and the thought came to me that I ‘woke up at 3:18.’ I was not interested to see nearly the same wording in your weblog today” (that is, March 27).
He was referring to my 1986 dream, where the bank teller told me, “This is the beginning of a lot of money.” Recall that I asked her to repeat her statement, because “I want to remember it when I WAKE UP.”
If we relate this to the awakening of the sleeping giant, it all seems to tie into March 18, extended, of course, to March 28.